As you ask
by oakleaf
Summary: ...so it shall be. A collection of my avengerkink fills. Rating, characters and genre subject to change. New chapters may come even though story is set to complete; it is complete as it stands./ Chapter 5: After. Maria Hill reflects on the man she loves. Spoilers for the movie. Coulson/Maria.
1. Captchaing Humanity: Natasha, Clint, Gen

**Story note: **Due to the shortness of the majority of my fills for avengerkink prompts, mini-ish fills will now be added as chapters to this story.

**A/N:** Yet another prompt fill. Written in the comment box, so forgive any mistakes. Movieverse

* * *

**Captcha-ing Humanity**

There was something about being anonymous that she liked. It was part of her innate being that helped her survive as a spy.

She would trawl through the many online forums that allowed anonymous posting and she'd find the posts that appealed to her.

Sometimes they were inspirational stories, sometimes funny pictures, and, at odd times, the occasional heart-breaking and beautifully written short story.

She never left many words, usually a sentence or two, or even just a phrase.

She never left any details that would point to her.

She never drew attention to her presence on a particular site, and visited them at random.

But it was neither the anonymity she craved, nor the thrill of finding something amazing. It was not the release it gave her from her stress-filled life.

It was that innocuous captcha.

To others, it was a little obstacle, a precaution that sometimes annoyed the user and sometimes caused the loss of work. To others it was not a cause for celebration when the site accepted that you were able to read.

Every time she was able to successfully navigate a captcha, she would smile tightly.

At least she could still answer 'Are you human?' with a yes.

At least she was still human.

It was one of the nights she needed to prove her humanity to herself that Clint knocked on her door.

Getting no response, he listened carefully through the door and thought he heard the quiet, muffled sobs of the Black Widow.

He quickly entered his code and flung open the door.

She sat on her bed, a laptop computer flung to the floor, landing in such a way that it must have been thrown. There was a pillow over her face as her shoulders shook, leaning over drawn up knees and her lower back against the wall.

She looked up at the intrusion and saw her face and reddened eyes for a moment before she hid it again.

He walked slowly over to the laptop and picked it up, looking at the screen.

_**Please try again.**_

Are you human?

He knew. He understood, because he'd done the same thing before.

"If you weren't human, would you feel so bad about all this?" he asked, voice firm.

"If I had feelings, I would."

"Oh, Tasha." He grimaced, eyes downcast as he sat down beside her and handed her the laptop. "You are human, and humans make mistakes."

She heard the unspoken message and entered the new captcha code.

_Your comment has been successfully posted_came onscreen.

She let go of the breath she had been holding and smiled at her friend.

"Thanks."

"Goodnight, Tasha. Don't stay up too late," he added, a little smirk on his face.

She didn't stop looking for the captcha because of that one failure.

She still browsed the forums, leaving her little contributions.

She still liked to answer 'Are you human?', filling in the little box after the image.

She still liked having her humanity confirmed, because some nights she felt like a monster.

Because if she was human, she could change, she could wipe off that ledger and she could fight by her friends.

She could fight for those that couldn't.

FIN.

* * *

**Prompt:  
**"Proving she's human: After bad missions, or when she's feeling depressed or upset or [reasons], Natasha likes to browse forums and comment anonymously. Because when the captcha tells her to prove that she's human, she can do that.

And sometimes she just needs a reminder of her humanity."

_Reviews=love._


	2. On Purpose: Clint, Gen

__**A/N:** Written for the following prompt:

"_deaf!Clint, he did it on purpose (self-injury, but for practical purposes; mind control)_: I've seen a lot of prompts and fills that bring Clint's deafness into movieverse. Not so many that focus on how he became deaf _intentionally_, to avoid sound-based mind control. And I think that would be kind of a big thing for movie!Clint, considering what he's been through, so I'd like something that focuses on just the moments leading up to that, with the terror and the _oh god not again never again_ and relief when it's done, and the certainty that not only was it the right thing to do but the only thing he could have done."

I have no knowledge of the comics, only what I have guessed from other stories and Wikipedia. I know it's really short; it was written really quickly.

* * *

The music was lilting and discordant.

The moment he heard it he felt the familiar tug of another mind entering and commanding his. The feeling was not as strong this time and the hold tenuous and he managed to full free.

The music was still there though and it took him more and more willpower to keep his mind out of the other man's control.

He began to panic as he recognised the feeling of being under someone's rule once again. He didn't want to have to fight his friends again and he definitely didn't want to let himself into that cycle of self-hatred and panic and insecurity again.

He did not want to lose control over his actions again.

His control over his mind slipped for a moment as those thoughts ran through it.

He quickly pushed everything from his mind as he sought to regain control and to find a way out.

The answer presented itself to him after a moment's thought.

He pulled out the sonic arrow that was meant to be fired and set it off, just as he felt his control over himself slip.

A moment of blinding pain and silence reigned.

He screamed against the pain and forced the last vestiges of control from his mind.

And relief reigned in his mind and he knew that they would not control him again.

It was the best way – no, actually, it was the only way.

He had control - he was free.

The world faded to black.


	3. On Purpose II: Tony, Clint, Gen

**A/N:** Someone asked for a sequel to the previous fill over at the kinkmeme. I quote:

**_Anonymous:_**_ *whines* *grabby hands* Oh Clint. Well, good thing Stark seems to like you. He'll either fix it or make it better than new!_

**_Me:_**_ A!A: Thank you for the kind comment! Yeah, I like the thought of Stark fixing him up. But that's a whole 'nother story :)_

**_Anonymous:_**_ Will you, perhaps, maybe, be writing that fic? Please? Because that would be amazing!_

This happened.

* * *

He locked himself in the lab.

"JARVIS. Pull up everything I've ever looked at with regards to biomedical engineering, any tech that has miniaturised microphones and the most recent research articles to do with the development of hearing aids."

"Certainly, sir."

The screens around him sprung to life.

A thousand glowing words surrounded him, bright white-blue light against the dim lighting in the room.

He closed his eyes for a moment, clearing all the side projects he was running in his mind, pushing them aside for the time being.

When he opened his eyes, his mind was focussed on this alone.

His eyes scanned over the text, learning things quickly that took others much longer. His mind pieced together the theories, drawing the connections that took others experience to find, let alone understand.

He had made his way through several research articles and several more dated designs before he closed his eyes momentarily once again.

He let his mind place the last puzzle pieces, opening his eyes, then reaching for a stylus that he had been making some skeleton notes with.

"Clear the table," he ordered, waving his arm over the place he usually did his designs, causing all of the documents that were open to disappear.

He started sketching, laying out the proposed circuit to one side at the same time as putting the exterior shape together.

At one point he stopped, tired, after nearly thirty hours awake.

He seemed lost in thought for a moment, before coming back to himself, grabbing the stylus tightly and writing in large, capital letters in the corner of his design. He lifted this text up and slid it to the corner of the hologram, standing perpendicular to the table's surface.

At fifty hours, his body couldn't take only caffeine and bites of food for a moment longer and his eyes drifted shut and he slumped into his chair, head resting on the table, stylus still in hand.

He saw the way the archer had known that using the sonic arrow was the only way out, but the way he was now, he would never be as effective a sniper as he had been.

He knows that the other man knows the consequence of his actions, but can't stop seeing the hurt of no longer being fully a part of the team.

It breaks his heart to see the acceptance in the other man's eyes that he's leaving everyone else behind and the only way he recognises that feeling so vividly is that he remembers his own eyes when he thought he was dying.

He couldn't leave him like that.

He was an engineer, after all, and it was simple matter of learning biomedical engineering. What was the point of his genius if he didn't use it for his friends - his family?

Clint walked down to Tony's lab, having just left the supervision of the doctors and nurses a few hours before.

He hadn't seen the genius for a week now, and was curious about what Tony was up to.

When he made it to the glass entrance to the lab, he saw an exhausted tony sleeping against a benchtop, a bright hologram of a hearing aid hovering above the table and some bright text on a corner of the table.

He could just make out the text.

He knocked loudly on the door - or at least, he thought it was loudly, and it did wake Tony. Tony walked to the door and opened it, tiredly saying, "Yeah, come in, I'm nearly done."

Clint's eyes had trained themselves on Tony's lips and had managed to figure out what the other man had said.

Tony hadn't really realised he'd been speaking until he started to drink his coffee. He spluttered, waved his arm over part of the table and wrote "SORRY" on the table in his messy, all-caps scrawl.

Clint laughed.

"I can lip read. Comes with the job. What's this?" he added after a moment's pause.

Tony looked at Clint through sleepy eyes. "Making hearing aids."

"Why?"

He pointed to the corner with the text.

'I FIGHT FOR MY FRIENDS.'

"Okay... and?"

"You look sad. You want to stay as part of the team. You need your hearing. I fight for my friends. Hence I build hearing aids."

"Thanks."

"I like you."

There was a moment's silence before JARVIS interrupted it.

"Sir, the initial fabrication is complete."

Tony headed over to a machine and pulled out two small objects.

"Try these."

* * *

**A/N:** Yeah, I had this great profound phrase in mind and then I forgot it. Oops.

If anyone is interested, I did an art fill for a prompt about the Avenger's handwriting. (link: oakleafrain. tumblr post /29471459012)


	4. Siblings of Choice: Steve, Natasha, Gen

**A/N: **I should be studying… but I'm not, as you can tell. This is not much of anything, really. I feel like it's terribly out of character. I plead ignorance, having only seen the Iron Man movies and the Avengers. I tried to plan it, but it exploded in ways I didn't expect.

* * *

**Five times Natasha and Steve were siblings to each other**

**_one_**  
It's not so long after the whole mess with the Chitauri that the Avengers are once more required to assemble.

There are explosions every which way, but luckily this time it's a pretty much deserted area in the middle of the desert.

Somehow, inexplicably, the Captain is caught unaware by a blast while throwing his shield. He's knocked back by the blast, burns covering his chest and arms.

The other Avengers are busy, caught in their own fights.

Natasha sees him and catches the shield as it heads towards her, where she's supposed to be protecting his back.

Her vision flashes red and she moves to the injured man's side.

When the fight ends, the rest of the Avengers see a scene that they didn't really expect.

Natasha is leaning over Steve, looking confused about what to do.

The amazing thing is that they can see the panic on her face and when she sees them, the desperation.

**_two_**  
Steve's confused.

He's often so, but a little unsure of who to ask this time.

It's not a technology or science issue, so Bruce and Tony would not be the best people to ask.

He and Clint talk, but not a lot and it might be awkward to ask about these things.

Thor is great, but wouldn't be much help with regards to this.

That leaves Natasha.

He seems to have a curious relationship with her, it's comfortable and he knows that if he asks her, she won't think him strange and that's a nice thought to have.

Decision made, he goes to the training room, then the shooting range without success, before finding her reading on the sofa in the living area.

"Hey," he says, sitting on one of the chairs nearby.

She puts her book down and looks up at him, assessing for the barest of moments before responding.

"You want to talk about something?" she asks, and he starts. How did she know?

She notices that motion, although small, and elaborates. "You're here without anything to do, and your back is to the television."

Steve notices these things as she says them.

"Uh, I just wanted to ask about some words I came across. I was on the internet and used Google to search some books and comics I remember, and several unfamiliar words came up. Here," he slides a list to her.

She pauses to read the list - which contains some fandom terms, from feels to slash and all the way back again - and then laughs and explains to him, without condescension of any kind, what each of them means. He blushes sometimes, but she only smiles.

"Thanks," he says as he makes to leave the room.

"No problem," she says, still smiling, "Any more questions, I'll be happy to help."

**_three_**  
Natasha and Clint are still technically agents of SHIELD, so they still have their own missions. They're separated this time, and Natasha returns back to the tower earlier than Clint – and in a really bad mood.

Steve is a little wary about approaching her, but someone needs to go talk her out of her locked room.

The others are even more scared of her (she's not _that_ scary, is she?) so it's up to him to do it.

He knocks lightly on the door. There's no response, just like there hasn't been for the ten or so hours she's been home.

"I'm coming in, whether you like it or not. If you open the door, I won't have to break the door down."

He hears a movement, the click of a lock. He pushes the door open, sees the mess that's inside and then looks for Natasha. She's huddled on the bed, looking thoroughly angry and miserable and weary.

He walks inside and takes another look around the room.

It looks like she's been throwing things around, by the sheets strewn across the floor and the slight dents in the walls.

He sits beside her, close but not touching. He knows not to ask, because it's obvious she's not okay, and if she doesn't want to share, well that's okay to him for now as well. He'll just give her his company.

"They were only children," she whispers, knees drawn up to her chest. "They'd done nothing and they still…" she trails off.

"I'm sure you tried your best." There's so much more he should say, but he doesn't know how to phrase it. He doesn't know how to express that he too wished for peace, wished the innocents needn't suffer, that children didn't need to grow up too fast in a way that would do justice to these thoughts.

She jumps up with an angry huff, fists clenched, trembling only slightly. "That he could -" She lapses into Steve thinks is Russian, but is unmistakably angry.

"Spar with me?" Steve asks after a moment. He knows that she usually does it with Clint after a mission and he's not around this time.

"Are you sure?" She sounds hesitant.

"I'll be fine." He smiles, and she does too, although it doesn't really reach her eyes.

She is really angry, he finds as they fight in the ring, but by the end of it, she's relaxed a lot more, even if the haunted look still hasn't completely left her eyes.

"Thanks," she murmurs as they make to leave the ring.

"It's nothing," he responds.

Even though he wakes up a little sore and bruised (which quickly fades, thank to the serum, damn she was angry), he thinks it's totally worth seeing his teammate – family, sister – happier.

She greets him warmly at breakfast and smiles slightly when he sits down next to her. Tony's face at this point is almost comical; Bruce and Pepper kind of get it, but only a little, and even then, not really.

**_four_**  
Natasha and Steve are sitting in front of the television and playing, of all things, New Super Smash Bros. Brawl, when Tony walks in.

He's a bit surprised at the sight. Actually, that's an understatement – a huge understatement.

Natasha is calmly winning with the grace with which she seems to do everything. Steve, however, is swearing like the solider he is.

Tony would be – appalled? he guesses, but all rational and coherent thought has left him for a moment – if he weren't so surprised to hear the epithets that were coming out of Steve's mouth as he fumbles with the controls.

It's simple to see that Steve isn't great at this. However, he accepts Natasha's suggestion that they team up with a huge grin on his face.

It surprises Tony more than it should to see Steve relaxing like this.

He still doesn't get it.

He knows someone that might.

Tony finds Clint in his room, at his desk, doing a stack of paperwork.

"I'm not disrupting anything, am I?"

"No, I need a disruption." Clint finished the sentence with a flourish and turns to face Tony.

"I was wondering," Tony begins and is unsure how to continue.

"Yes?"

"Do you know why Capsicle and the Russian are such good friends?"

Clint quirks an eyebrow at this. "Why do you need to know?"

"Because. Don't you think it's a little weird that those two hit it off so well?"

"No?" There's a questioning inflection in that statement and Tony wonders if he missed something.

He voices that thought.

"No," Clint says, pauses, and restarts, "Well, yeah, actually, maybe. Natasha needs someone who's serious when needed, but still relaxes with her and understands why she does things. From what I know of the Captain, he feels protective of her, even though she's capable. He doesn't overdo it thought, so she tolerates it."

Tony mulls over that for a second.

"What are you to her then?"

Clint smirks and says, "Wouldn't you like to know," and turns back to his paperwork.

Tony shakes his head and leaves the room, calling "You're sleeping together, aren't you," over his shoulder, needing to have the last word.

Clint doesn't answer, but his smile, hidden from Tony, widens.

**_five_**  
It's a long while after he initially wakes up in this new world when his life isn't about meeting people and reading up about new cultural values. He finally has some time to himself to do what he wants.

He looks them up.

Everyone he knew is dead and gone. He knows that, but reading about how each of them goes just makes him sadder and sadder. He doesn't give up, though; like a good leader, he wants – needs – to know what happened to his men.

He saves Peggy for last.

Several years after the war, after he crashed, she married, had children.

He is happy for her.

He's just shutting down the computer when Natasha walks in.

She sees the nostalgia on his face mixed with the sadness of loss.

She smiles softly, asks if anything is wrong.

"It's strange that everyone I knew is gone now. I thought I would die with that plane, but I wake up in this new world. I miss them." His smile is bittersweet.

He doesn't need to say anything else. She gets it.

In the silence, he quietly tells her about Peggy: about her strength and her beauty, about how he had loved her.

She listens.

The next day, she hands him a slip of paper. It has an address on it.

"What is this?" he asks.

"Where she is buried."

He doesn't ask who or how; he knows.

Before he leaves the room, he remembers his manners.

"Thank you." After a moment, he adds, "You're welcome to come, if you wish."

She drives him there and enters the graveyard with him, but wanders off as he approaches her gravesite.

She lets him have a private moment with his lost love.

They meet again at the entrance and make their way back to Stark Tower. The ride is silent and if Natasha notices the tears on his face, she doesn't say anything, but hugs him tightly when they get out of the car once they reach the tower.

In return, he holds her tightly, expressing his thanks in the gesture.

* * *

**Prompt: **"_[Gen] Natasha, Steve - Friendship/Like Siblings: _In the movie, Steve protects Natasha with his shield during a blast. I want more of this! And not just from Steve. I'd love some big sister!Natasha jumping in to protect a hurt Steve during a fight (this, especially this!), and Steve coming to her for advice, and her instinctively going to him when she just needs someone to talk to/be with.  
Bonus points for Tony being all o.O over the way Steve magically brings out Natasha's softer side, and Natasha magically brings out Steve's happier/easy-going side.  
Extra bonus points for Steve crying on Natasha's shoulder at some point - over Peggy, and Bucky, or missing "his" world in general - and Natasha _not_ being awkward in the slightest about comforting him."


	5. After: Maria HillxPhil Coulson

_Not a prompt fill, but inspired by a general Maria Hill/Phil Coulson prompt._

_Movieverse; not a fix-it. Shamelessly inspired by the gag reel._

* * *

It doesn't take Fury telling her in her earpiece to know that he's gone.

The entire ship falls silent in that moment and she can't think past the sudden ache in her chest.

It fades after a few beats; she knows she needs to finish the day and then she can grieve later, she can cry once the crisis is over and she logically knows that working for SHIELD, this was going to happen one day.

So she pushes the feelings to the side until this is over.

...

After the Battle at Manhattan is over, Maria cries. It's quiet and no one is around, so she mourns the man who had worked with her for so long, who had wormed his way into her heart from colleague to friend to lover.

And the pain returns.

There is no one now that knows the frivolous things that SHIELD deems unimportant. There is no one left that knows her favourite colour, her favourite coffee and he favourite song. There is no one left who makes her feel calm by simply being in the room; he's left her without him, and she doesn't know if she'll have the time or the will to find someone else.

...

She throws herself into the Avengers, knowing it would have been his pride and joy. Sometimes she'll wander down to his grave and tell him about it, when there's a moment rest and she doesn't have a pile of paperwork to go through or a fight to supervise. She doesn't make it a habit of talking to dead people, but she's willing to make an exception for him. It makes her calmer on the days when she wishes he was still here, running this hectic mess. He would have loved it.

She hardly ever wonders at the 'could have been's and the 'what if's; she too much of a realist for that. But when she does, she wonders if he would be proud of her, of them, and she silently remembers him.

The greatest man she ever knew.

* * *

_Reviews are love._


End file.
